All registered orphanages homes will soon be offered loans through the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund.
The loans which will be given to the orphanages is to create affordable access to funding for the orphanage homes to grow, expand, create wealth and put people to work.
According to the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development, the loan scheme, which attracts only nine percent interest rate per annum, is available to business owners who are registered in the state.
Its Assistant Director Child Development Unit, Abiola Oshifowokan said this at a training meeting of the TETFUND NRF Research on Needs and Vulnerability of Orphanages and Family Settings in Nigeria.
In his welcome remark, Group Managing Director of Courteville Business Solutions, Adebola Akindele, says as part of the company’s measures to ensure the less privileged in society don’t starve of food and goods, it quarterly distribute food items and cash to orphanage homes.
According to him, his company supports several Orphanage homes and vulnerable children such as Bab Es Salam Home, Little Saints Orphanage, across the country through donation of food and household items.
He described the Company’s gesture as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, even as it restated its commitment to positively impact on humanity by giving back to the society through effectual activities.
Speaking on the company’s support for the research, Akindele says at all times, ensuring the best interest of the child, child participation, community ownership and participation, public-private partnerships, and awareness that any support to children is not a favour, but a contribution to the attainment of their fundamental human rights.
Akindele says it should remain key principles for all interventions to care, support and protect orphans and vulnerable children, urging all programmes to continually monitor and assess the quality and quantity of interventions for children and their families, so ineffective efforts can be amended and effective efforts scaled up in a timely fashion.
He believes that the participatory and inclusive research when conducted would spur all stakeholders to an unfailing commitment to adopt and use them as a guide in all care, support and protection interventions for orphans and vulnerable children in Nigeria
Deputy Managing Director Courteville Business Solutions, Adewale Sonaike says the company will continue to support good causes in the society especially to those that have direct impact on human development.
Courteville, according to him, will continue to seize opportunity to make its impact felt in the society, listing such opportunities to include support provided entrepreneurship programs, vulnerable groups, and so on.
He encouraged that every good organisation should have corporate social responsibility as one of its objectives, because beyond trying to makes sales, they must ensure they give back to the community by improving the welfare of the communities being served.
In line with this, he stated that every year, the company visit selected orphanages and homes where provide little support in terms of products, donations and cash because they know that people running those homes sometimes are doing quite a lot, they are taking care of abandoned children, orphaned children, disabilities of different kinds. They need to be supported”.
Principal Investigator for TETFUND National Research Fund 2019 on Needs and Vulnerability of Orphanages and Family Settings in Nigeria, Professor Olubukola Ojo of the Obafemi Awolowo University of Ile-Ife, says the aim of this Research is to examine the recurrent nature of child abuse and trafficking occurring in those places the media has termed ‘baby factory’ with a view to providing preventative approaches for curbing the menace, using counselling as a tool.
According to her, Baby factory which serves as an avenue for human trafficking predisposes women of childbearing-age, expectant mothers and the child to ineffable trauma, violence and abuse.
She notes that the research would be carried out in all the six geo-political zone of the country within a period of twenty months.
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